Every so often, I play through my binder of songs, looking specifically for songs written in the same month of years past. I’m not sure why, but I enjoy it. It amazes me to think about where I’ve been, what I’ve struggled with, what I’ve enjoyed, what I was passionate about, et cetera.

But tonight, my startling revelation is that there are no songs of August.

That’s not entirely true. There is one in particular, but it is a very personal therapy sort of song. I don’t think I’ve ever shared it with anyone. I doubt I ever will. And there are a handful of others…but they are Joe Plantt’s fault.

In 2001, I became aware of this young man. I don’t recall that I met him, but that he was a friend of a friend (heh…that’s funny because of the song) and a friend of my brother. There was this incredible story about how he dropped his guitar and snapped the neck, and his solution was, to be sure, duct tape.

I was not nearly so uptight as I am now, in my elder years of almost-thirty, and to be honest with you, he was cute enough that I forgave the impropriety of the duct tape on an instrument. I went home and wrote the most ridiculous two-stanza-ed song I’ve ever heard in my life about Joe Plantt and his guitar, titled “Ode to Joe Plantt.”

When I shared it with my friends, they enjoyed it so much that I began to write these cheesy, short songs about people–or written around some weird statement they’d made (like Rachel, who was telling me about her first car, and said, “It’s nothing fancy–just a four-door, car-car,”).

But the beauty of it (which I hadn’t realized until today) is that several of them were written in August. So not only do I not have any real songs of August…I have to admit that August is the month of the Joe Plantt-inspired songs.

Ah, the God given creative urge must be expressed, or it, like life itself, fades in significance – wasting away. Reproach not thyself, semmie , for “the world’s greatest music is still the work of a comparative handful of great composers and most of the world’s great art is the product of a few hundred brilliant talents.” (Warren T. Brookes – The Economy in Mind)

One rarely knows of one’s own import except in retrospect – publish, record and stand back, awaiting recognition. Your joy in shaping eight simple notes into a work of art may be proclaimed in the heart of another, if you but dream.